//------------------------------// // 4. The Most Terrible Night // Story: Smoke and Mirrors // by Baby Boo //------------------------------// IN THE manner of dreams, Twilight knew the place as though she had lived there for years: a library the size of a city, with all the knowledge of every world somewhere in its endless halls. Everything about the place was hauntingly familiar, yet she knew she'd never been there before. She wasn't alone. With her was Dreamsweet, who played on a blanket while Twilight tried to get her to pay attention to a story from a massive, ancient book. It seemed as though something terrible would happen if Dreamsweet didn't listen to the story, but she was too young to pay attention to the strange illustrations, and more interested in things she could fit in her mouth. Twilight kept trying to read the rambling, incoherent story for years, but long before the journey was over the pages had become rippling bedspreads, which unfolded into bizarre landscapes across which she chased the last fleeing words. As the story escaped her entirely, everything else dissolved into darkness, through which rang the bubbly laughter of the baby. Twilight's eyes snapped open. Wide awake now, she could still hear Dreamsweet laughing, loud and clear. Turning her head, she realized that the foal was actually sitting on the bed right next to her. "Dawk!" Twilight pedaled backward and, narrowly, managed not to fall off the bed. Dreamsweet clapped her hooves and giggled at her aunt's expression. "How did you get in here?" Twilight asked aloud. She looked around for lurking pranksters, but the room remained silent and dark. Not as dark as it should have been, though. Twilight had just an instant to realize that Dreamsweet was giving off a soft peachy glow, and then, with a bright flash and a tingling pop, she disappeared. Twilight's jaw dropped to the covers and her eyes bugged out. Shaking, she waved her hoof around where Dreamsweet had been, but no trace of her remained. "Now what?" Spike came up alongside the bed with a sleepy scowl. "Dreamsweet was here, just now! But she's gone again!" Twilight pointed to where the baby wasn't. Spike snorted. "O-kayyy... so where'd she go?" "I think she teleported away!" He rolled his eyes, but then got a look at Twilight's face and did a double-take. "Wait, you mean for real?" "Yes for real, thank you very much! She's having an infant magic outburst!" "Oh wow." Spike put on his serious face. "So, what do we do?" "First we find her..." Twilight closed her eyes and sent forth a faintly-visible ripple of magic. Immediately an answering pulse came back from the enchanted crystal pendant around Dreamsweet's neck. "Okay, she's upstairs, over... that way... and that would be, what, on the rotunda balcony?" She wasn't looking for an answer, merely thinking out loud, already heading for the door while puzzling it out. Out in the hallway she spread her wings and took off toward the palace's hub. "Why don't you just teleport to her?" Spike called after her. "I don't want to startle her. And I don't want her to imitate it!" Spike gave up on following as Twilight picked up speed. "Ahh, well, I'm sure you can han... dle... thiiieeeauuusss," he said, mauling the words around a cavernous yawn. As he turned to head back to bed, a door across the hall opened, and a thatched mess of pink hair peeked out. From behind it came Fluttershy's voice. "Spike? Is something wrong?" "Ahh, Dreamsweet's out of bed," Spike said with a dismissive wave. "And apparently she can teleport." Fluttershy blinked. "Oh, my." Spike just pointed down the hall, silently directing any further questions to the Princess flying off over that way, and slouched back toward his basket. Fluttershy walked a short way after Twilight, took a long thoughtful look back at her own bedroom doorway, but then sighed and took to the air. The grand rotunda of the Crystal Palace was a tall open space through the heart of the central tower. For about half the tower's height, starting from an ornate window capping the palace's open undervaulting, each floor was pierced with a ten-sided balcony, widening up to the midway level then narrowing again. Although the dome at the top was actually the underside of the uppermost spire, windows and transparent supports created the effective illusion of a skylight beneath open air. Whether sparkling with sunshine by day, or twinkling with a thousand reflected torches by night, each floor of the rotunda provided a view of breathtaking power for what, technically, was just a large volume of nothing. At the moment, the only thing Twilight noticed about the spectacular scene was the foal that wasn't there. She tutted and rolled her eyes, then closed them to send out another magical pulse. As she dropped, with moderate grace, into a dive toward Dreamsweet's new location, some sort of pink hair monster came flying up from the guest-room wing toward her. Somewhat to her own surprise, Twilight managed to pull back to a hover without crashing into the pink-and-yellow thing, and identify it as Fluttershy in the same instant, with only the barest of startled yelps. Fluttershy brushed the tangled carpet away from her eyes and gave Twilight a brief, but firm look which said the bed-mane was not to be discussed. "Spike said that Dreamsweet's out of her room?" Twilight nodded and groaned an "mm-hmm." She pointed toward a lower floor. "She's somewhere in that hallway, or one of the rooms just off it. If we keep quiet and don't startle her, I'm hoping she won't teleport away." Both of them dropped downward and angled toward the dimly-lit hallway. Twilight went on, "I have a spell to block her from teleporting, but I need to actually touch her to use it safely." The hall was beneath an opaque wedge of flooring and its walls were similarly dark. Only a fourth of the wall torches were in use, creating long pools of moody shadow between islands of flickering light. At the far end, moonlight spilled through a segment of the great multi-story window along the southwest outer wall. Against that blue glow, they could see a small form bobbing and swirling in midair. "Shhh..." Twilight whispered to Fluttershy, of all ponies. They sailed down the hallway toward the baby, drawing close enough to hear her babbling merrily to herself. Twilight came to a landing a short distance away and gently called Dreamsweet's name. Dreamsweet wavered gyroscopically in the air, tiny wings buzzing at honeybee speeds, as she swung around to look at the mares. Her toothless smile widened and she squealed a cheery greeting. Twilight and Fluttershy gave back broad smiles of their own and waved their forehooves in big sweeps down toward the floor. "Come on down sweetie, let's get you back to bed," Twilight sing-songed. "I can tell you a story if you'll come down to us now," lilted Fluttershy. They kept making big clear get-down-here-will-you signals, and as though swept in by the wind of their gestures, Dreamsweet started dipping lower toward them. She got just low enough for Twilight to almost reach her without jumping. "There you are, scamp!" bellowed Luna, not nearly at Royal volume, but loud and hearty nonetheless, as she soared in from the hall's distant end. Twilight's hoof came down reflexively to smack her own forehead. Overhead, precisely as she expected, Dreamsweet let out a high-pitched giggle at Auntie Luna's approach and promptly blinked out again. Luna gave a loud, heated snort and landed before Twilight and Fluttershy. Her head dropped low. "I... am not very good with foals, am I?" Twilight waved it off. "Eh, don't worry. I don't think any of us has any particular talent for it." She paused for a moment, hoof to her chin, eyes ticking back and forth. "Okay, I have a plan. Fluttershy, you go back to the royal bedroom and get some of her toys, a bottle – anything you think she might come down for. Luna, you stay here in the rotunda where 'Shy can find you, and then use the locator spell to find me and Dreamsweet." "That makes sense. The orange owl, I'm sure she'll go for that," said Fluttershy, turning to race back down the hall. Luna gave a quick nod and followed, leaving Twilight to lower her head and cast the locator ping again. On the floor below, two crystal-pony guards stood beside an unexceptional doorway, watching nothing much happen. Night shift in the lower guest hall was not a posting for action and adventure, particularly when the only guests were staying in the upper guest hall. The younger one, a stallion of brilliant blue with a short-trimmed blonde mane beneath his ceremonial helmet, flicked his ears slightly as an unfamiliar sound came purring along the corridor. As the noise passed over his head, Beryl broke from stone-faced at attention to actually paying attention, and turned to gape at the... brightly colored bird? Something with wings, making a wet motorboat lip noise as it flew. He shot a look at the older guard, a unicorn colored deep red, almost cherry-cola brown. Garnet had a thick bushy charcoal-gray moustache, matched to his mane, tail and above all, his thunderhead eyebrows – which were, in that instant, raised so high in surprise that his eyes were, uncharacteristically, visible. They simply hadn't time to do anything more than gawk before the fast-flying creature was nearly at the corner. Just before it swerved out of view, it let out an unmistakable shrill peal of laughter, and the guards were able to identify the flying object. "Hey, was that – oh buckets –" Beryl groaned as he began trotting after the wayward Princess. Garnet's face-brushes gave him an impressive mastery of weary scowls. "Hooohhhh boy," he rumbled, then hastened to catch up with the rookie. The flying foal had hooked around to the next long hallway on the left, but fortunately hadn't gone zipping down it. Her attention had been caught for a moment by a candlelit mirror on the wall a short distance in. The guards approached in silent, breath-held caution, more tense than any rampaging monster could have made them. "Ahh... come here, baby...?" tried Garnet. "Come on, good baby, just come over here..." "Dude, she's not a dog," said Beryl. "Well, I don't know – how do you call a baby?" "You don't clap and whistle, I know that much." "Oh yeah? I'm gonna try that!" Garnet followed up on his word, knocking his forehoof on the floor and giving his best dog-whistle. "Come on Dreamsweet, let's go, baby!" Much to Beryl's annoyance, the Princess seemed to respond to this pretty well, grinning broadly and hovering slowly toward Garnet. But when the red guard tried to grab the baby, she shot up away from him with a rising gleeful squeal, and bobbed away, daring him to come catch her. Both guards gave nearly the same exasperated growl and bolted after her. The Princess screamed in delight and took off like a dart, laughing down the hall, the hooves of the guards thundering after.